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[...] it presents a valuable overview of the extensive literature on the societal correlates of modern warfare and makes a convincing, and timely, case for the deceptive use of the threat of war by populists or budding dictators.

In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Agner Fog presents a ground-breaking new argument that explains the existence of differently organised societies using evolutionary theory. It combines natural sciences and social sciences in a way that is rarely seen.

According to a concept called regality theory, people show a preference for authoritarianism and strong leadership in times of war or collective danger, but desire egalitarian political systems in times of peace and safety. These individual impulses shape the way societies develop and organise themselves, and in this book Agner argues that there is an evolutionary mechanism behind this flexible psychology. Incorporating a wide range of ideas including evolutionary theory, game theory, and ecological theory, Agner analyses the conditions that make us either strident or docile. He tests this theory on data from contemporary and ancient societies, and provides a detailed explanation of the applications of regality theory to issues of war and peace, the rise and fall of empires, the mass media, economic instability, ecological crisis, and much more.

Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture draws on many different fields of both the social sciences and the natural sciences. It will be of interest to academics and students in these fields, including anthropology, political science, history, conflict and peace research, social psychology, and more, as well as the natural sciences, including human biology, human evolution, and ecology.

1. Introduction
1.1. A different kind of social science
1.2. Overview of the book

2. The Theory of Regal and Kungic Cultures
2.1. In a nutshell: ‘regal’ and ‘kungic’ explained
2.2. Evolutionary basis for regality theory
2.3. An evolutionarily stable strategy
2.4. The behavior of the leader
2.5. Why are most warriors and chiefs men?
2.6. Cultural effects of regal and kungic tendencies

3. Contributions from Other Theories
3.1. Influence of the environment: Contributions from ecological theory
3.2. Nature or nurture: Evolution of sociality
3.3. Fertility: Contributions from life history theory
3.4. Contributions from political demography
3.5. World view and personality: Authoritarianism theory
3.6. Contributions from other social psychological theories
3.7. Contributions from social values theories
3.8. The theory of tight and loose cultures and other culture theories
3.9. Contributions from human empowerment theory
3.10. Moral panics: Contributions from the sociology of deviance

4. Different Kinds of War in Human History
4.1. The rise of empires: Contributions from cultural selection theory
4.2. The fall of empires: Contributions from historical dynamics theory
4.3. General theories of war and peace
4.4. Changing patterns of war
4.5. Theories of revolution

5. Economic Determinants of Conflict and Fear
5.1. Fear is profitable: The economy of the mass media
5.2. Economic booms and busts
5.3. Greed or grievance: Economic theories of civil war
5.4. The resource curse
5.5. Example: Proxy war in Afghanistan

6. Strategic Uses of Fear
6.1. Terrorism conflicts
6.2. The strategy of tension in Italy and elsewhere
6.3. Fabrication of threats and conflicts
6.4. Example: Why World War II started

9. Discussion and Conclusion
9.1. Summary of findings
9.2. Three epochs in human history
9.3. The regal/kungic dynamics and human social development
9.4. New explanations of well-known phenomena
9.5. Integration with other theories
9.6. Policy lessons
9.7. Supporting evidence
9.8. What regality theory can be used for
9.9. Further discussion

10. Bibliography
11. Illustrations
Index

Dr. Agner Fog has taught at the Technical University of Denmark since 1995. For many years he has carried out interdisciplinary research combining the natural sciences and the social sciences in order to develop testable causal theories about social and cultural developments. Previous publications include Cultural Selection (1999) as well as a number of influential contributions to computer science.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

Agner Fog, Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0128